Page 9 of The Bane Witch

9

Mushrooms

When the news breaks, I feel hands circling my throat.

The first few days in Crow Lake, Myrtle allowed me to rest. I spent my time in bed, reading books from her stash of racy romance novels, trying and failing not to think of Regis—strong hands and the sandy shadow of his beard—and drinking cup after cup of a questionable tea she kept brewing for me. She made good on her promise to take me to Malone, where I got an overdue haircut, reshaping the long sheet of my hair into something edgy and just past the shoulders with face-framing layers, a new phone, and enough clothes to ride out the summer and fall without worry. And where a rattled doctor confirmed my cracked ribs and gave me an X-ray revealing an avulsion fracture of the fifth metatarsal on my right foot. He offered to write me a prescription for the pain, but beyond that, there was little he could do. After that, Myrtle’s home brew regime began.

At night, we’d sit on the porch in the dark, soaking in the clean scent of fir trees and sipping from our mugs. When I dared to question the bitter aftertaste, she admonished me with a cluck of the tongue. “Family recipe,” she insisted and got up to pour more. But then she would tell me stories about the motel and the guests she’d had over the years—the time a woman delivered a baby in cabin two, and the rock star who stayed in cabin four after leaving rehab, trying to avoid the press.

A week later, she put me to work.

Most days, I dust and make beds, vacuum the cabin floors. I help with laundry—bedsheets and towels—and give a hand in the café whenever I can, carting plates and glasses, wiping down tabletops, washing a few dishes, simple things. We got crutches per the doctor’s orders, but they hurt my hands and I stopped using them. Besides, my foot is healing quickly, hurting much less by the day. Maybe there’s something to Myrtle’s tea after all.

The guests dwindle as September approaches, but we stay busy at the Balsam Motor Inn. The café sees the most business at breakfast. And really, café is an overstatement; Myrtle doesn’t even keep a menu. She has a blackboard by the front door where she writes what’s available for the day, and a help-yourself spread that she puts out on the small bar every morning—fruit and boxes of cereal, shingles of toast with butter packets, a pitcher of orange juice. But she keeps the waffle iron hot and mixes batter daily. And the maple syrup is in ample supply. At lunch, she offers one kind of sandwich along with peanut butter and jelly for the kids and individual bags of chips. For dinner, there might be a soup or a casserole on offer. Between our guests, people from town with slim pickings, and drivers who are passing by, there’s always a few folks inside. I don’t like being visible to people who might leave and take a mental picture of me with them, but I can’t hide out in her cabin forever while she clothes and feeds me like a child.

A couple of times, I wake in the night and find her gone, the front door open, forest beckoning. Once, I saw her turning down a path in the dark, Ed’s dog, Bart, at her heels. I wanted to follow, but my foot made it impossible to do so quietly. The absences unnerve me, like breaks in a chain, interruptions that should not be there. But I don’t ask her about them.

One night, I bring the picture from her living room out to the porch and hand it to her. “Who are they?”

She wipes the glass with her shirttail and looks at me as I sit down across from her. “Do you remember your grandmother?”

I shake my head.

Her lips purse. She points to the blond woman next to her in the picture. “She was my sister, Angel. You met her, but I guess you were too little to remember.”

“And the rest?” I press.

She studies their faces. “Well, you know me. This woman behind us is our mother, Laurel. Your great-grandmother. She was remarkable. It’s a shame you never got to know her. And this lady in the pearls is her sister, Bella. The other one is Bella’s daughter, Donna, who has an older sister, Lattie, who’s not in the photo.” Myrtle smiles. “So many years ago.”

She passes it back to me and I run a finger over their faces. “I wish I could meet them,” I say to myself.

But she hears me. “I suspect you will. Eventually.”

T HE NEXT EVENING, the news report airs on the small flat-screen television mounted on the wall. Myrtle keeps it on continuously for the guests but mutes it because the noise drives her crazy. We’re dealing with the last of the supper crowd, a whopping total of seven people. Tonight’s special: New York–style chili and saltine crackers. It’s a hit with several of the single men in town. Ed downs two and a half bowls on his own, and I slip him an extra sleeve of crackers when Myrtle isn’t looking. He winks his gratitude. The more food in his belly to soak up the beer, the better. I’m wiping down a table when she turns up the volume on the TV.

“Her body was found next to this firepit, no more than ten feet from her house,” the reporter says, a woman with short black hair and sharp cheekbones. “Like his other victims, she’d been strangled. This marks the Saranac Strangler’s fifth victim and a deadly turn in his MO. Only a couple of weeks since his last murder, the Strangler seems to be ramping up his activities, trying to sate a growing bloodlust. Additionally, this is the first victim found on private property. Is the Strangler getting sloppy? Or growing bolder?”

I feel it strike me like a blunt object, the flash of wet, pale hair, her smell—lavender shampoo and fear. Pee soaking the ground. It’s gone as quickly as it came, but I put a hand to my throat just the same. There is something starkly familiar about this one, though I can’t place it. I think I hear Henry laughing and spin around.

Myrtle is looking at Ed. His mouth hangs open. “Is it just me, or do you recognize that firepit?”

“Looks like the one at Beth Ann’s place. She keeps an old tractor tire rim in the stones just like that,” he confirms.

My chest clenches. Beth Ann—turnips and raccoons and sunshine smiles—the friend I always wanted but never had. She dropped in that first day after I arrived.

Myrtle’s face falls. “I was afraid of this. I told her she should stay with her brother in Vermont, just until this Strangler business passes.”

“This is the same Beth Ann I met?” I ask, setting a bowl and spoon in the sink behind the counter, hoping I’m wrong.

Myrtle frowns. “Yes. She worked as a freelance writer and had the benefit of being able to live anywhere, which is why I wanted her to leave. No point taking unnecessary chances. But once mountain life gets ahold of you, it’s hard to let go. Even for a few weeks.”

“She was doing so good,” Ed mentions, hanging his head. “Even you said it had been a long time since you’d seen a woman on her own take to these parts so well.”

Myrtle drops a dish towel to the counter. “No husband, no kids, no one to look out for her. I tried to convince her to pack up and go someplace else. Come back when she’s happily married. A woman like that gets lonely up here with nothing but trees for company. How’s she going to meet anyone? Huh?”

“You seemed to make it work,” I point out, but Myrtle only huffs.

“That’s different,” she insists.

I don’t see how, but there’s no arguing with her. I’ve already figured that much out. Ed, for all his extra years of experience, still has not.

Myrtle turns to him. “He’s close. He’s been dancing around us this whole time, but Beth Ann was one of ours. That means the Strangler is in Crow Lake.” Her eyes fall on me.

I turn my attention back to the news report as I push in chairs at the table I just bussed. The reporter is sharing a forensics profile of the killer, hoping it might spark some leads.

“The Saranac Strangler is believed to be a man in his thirties or forties. Known for the meticulousness of his previous crime scenes, he is thought to have an overarching need for order and control. His victims suggest a history of difficult relationships with women and a preoccupation with power and dominance. Though he leaves no DNA trace to corroborate the theory, it is believed his sexual fantasies are entangled with his need to kill, and it is suspected that these murders may be his only course for relief.”

Myrtle walks up behind me as I let out a choked laugh.

“Something funny to you?” she asks, her voice low.

My teeth clench and I busy myself wiping at imaginary spots on the salt and pepper shakers. “I know the type, is all,” I tell her.

“Homicidal maniac is a type ?” she asks, incredulous.

I turn to face her, my eyes cold. Somehow, this news makes it feel like Henry is winning. “It is for me.”

Her lips flatten against one another. “Come with me,” she says.

I follow her to the back of the café and slowly up the winding staircase—careful of my boot—to the second-story room. She unlocks the door and turns on the light. I recognize what must be the pantry, storage for all the food and equipment she uses in the café and guest cabins. Shelves line three walls stocked with canned tomatoes and powdered coffee creamer and large plastic jars filled with spices. Clean towels and tubs of laundry detergent fill another whole unit. “It can get hard to make it in or out of this town in the winter. It’s good to keep stores, just in case.”

I nod, knowing that once my foot fully heals, I’ll probably have to come up here and haul things down for her. The front wall by the door has built-in cabinets made of knotty pine. I glide my hand down them, running my fingers over the smooth tiles of the counter, feeling an odd pull to the last cabinet on the top. There’s an extra sink up here, I notice. And some kitchen supplies—a mortar and pestle, a coffee grinder, a food dehydrator. Nestled amid the stock of food and supplies is an upright futon with two pillows and a throw blanket on top.

“For the occasional straggler,” she tells me, nodding toward the futon. “It’s smart to keep an extra bed around here.”

She starts to reach for a large bag of salt. “I’ve got to get this down. Help me by opening that bin.”

With my cracked ribs, I can’t really muscle the bag, so I take the lid off the waiting plastic bin and pull out the old bag to throw away.

“This man,” she asks as we work, “the one you say is dangerous, that thinks you’re dead—he chokes you?”

I swallow. “Sometimes,” I admit.

When she looks at me, her eyes burn. “He ever kill anyone?”

“Not yet,” I tell her, moving to lean against the counter. I fold my arms and look away. These are hard things to admit to myself, much less someone else. I can’t imagine a woman like Aunt Myrtle being hurt by a man like Henry. But she doesn’t judge me. In fact, she’s remarkably placid.

She sighs. “But he’s been working up to it? Practicing on you?”

I nod. The women I’ve seen coming, the ones I hoped to save, flip like flash cards through my mind. These are not women Henry has killed. They are not even women he’s met yet. But somehow, I know they will be. Unless… My eyes flood with tears, hot and spiked with shame.

She gently grabs my chin, lifting my face up. “You look at me, Piers Corbin, when you talk about him. You understand? Don’t you ever hide your face in shame again. Did anything unusual ever happen during these episodes? Before or after? Any urges?”

“Urges?” I echo, sniffling. “Like what?”

“Never mind,” she says, looking a little disappointed. “You’d know them if they did.” She steps back, studies me. “Stay here until you calm down. No use alerting anyone down there that you’re upset. The less they know about you, the better.”

I nod.

She starts for the door, adding, “Stay out of the cabinets. Those are my personal stores.” And then she’s gone.

The room is blissfully quiet. I pull a tissue from a box, blotting my face, then wiping my nose. When I’m ready, I turn to go back down, but a feeling of intense curiosity compels me toward that far cabinet on top. Aunt Myrtle said to leave it alone, but the feeling wins out. Inside sit several unmarked jars of varying shapes and sizes. Most look like they began their life as something else—spaghetti sauce containers or pickle relish. One in particular catches my eye. It’s filled with something dried and wrinkly, off-white in color, that I can’t take my eyes off. Slowly, I reach for it, the glass cool in my hand as I grip the lid and twist. Once it’s off, I take a deep inhale of the earthy, moldy scent. My lungs practically hum with desire. My mouth waters. Everything in me is tingling with need. I know this feeling. I’ve felt it as a little girl staring at the pokeweed berries. The memory floods me with mortification, all those heavy, dark feelings I carried as a child, unwanted, misunderstood. The thud of the man at my feet. The lump of Don on the ground.

I screw the lid on tight and replace the jar, closing the cabinet and stepping away. Whatever else Myrtle is keeping in there, I don’t want to know. Her secrets are her own. Mine are already enough to bear.

I S PEND THE next day working hard to ignore the pull of that storeroom cabinet and its devilish jars. When I close my eyes at night, I see the dull gleam of its contents, the rich scent filling up my lungs. Myrtle notices my agitation, the way I can’t sit still, my need for movement, but she doesn’t say anything. The need is insatiable, a constant whine at my back, an itch I can’t reach. It clouds my mind when I try to read and distracts me in the café. Even Ed comments when I trip over his dog on my way to the washing machine, turning to apologize profusely to Bart, who is simply delighted to receive attention.

I’m embarrassed and annoyed that my condition—pica—has reared its ugly head. As a child, I couldn’t explain it. My mother always looked at me with such disappointment, as if she’d been given a freak for a daughter. Even the doctor seemed particularly vexed by my case, not sure what to make of this girl and her deadly obsession. But that was just it. It wasn’t deadly to me. Once they left me alone, eating pokeweed made a certain kind of sense. It felt so natural, an instinct I should follow, like drinking water. But as an adult, I understand how peculiar and unsettling it is, how it must look to those on the outside. And I can’t afford to stand out here. Nor can I risk appalling Aunt Myrtle, whose good graces are keeping me alive at the present moment. I suppress the urge.

But by the second night, I can no longer take it. I toss and turn and finally rise when I hear the front door open. Myrtle is going for one of her nightly walks. I pull on some shorts and scoot onto the porch, watching her disappear into the shadows, and then I bolt for the café. She keeps a spare key hidden in an old coffee can full of dryer sheets in the laundry room, which she leaves unlocked for guests to use at their discretion.

I make quick work of finding it and let myself in without turning on any lights. In the dark, the café is a muddle of shapes, silent like a heart that’s stopped beating. The spiral staircase rises like a spine at the back, and I clunk my way up it to the storeroom door. The door doesn’t budge, but luckily I have a sneaking suspicion that proves to be true—the front door key also unlocks this one. Grateful, I dart to the cabinet. The jar I’m looking for glows softly in its recesses, an invitation. I twist off its cap and reach inside, pulling up several fingers’ worth of the dried plant, shoving it into my mouth. The taste is buttery at first, only subtly bitter, and a bit like chewing on Styrofoam it’s so dry, but my eyes flutter with pleasure just the same. It’s some kind of mushroom, desiccated and chopped up. I should stop with one bite, but I can’t. I reach in again and again, letting myself savor the strange texture, the pungent, wood-like flavors. By the time I put the lid back on, I’ve made a sizable dent. I tuck it behind several of the other jars, in the hope that she won’t notice, and leave the café, locking up behind me.

Slipping the key back into its hiding spot, I rush to the cabin, praying she’s not back yet, and breathe a sigh of relief when I see the front door is still open. I stop in the bathroom to quickly rinse my mouth out. My eyes pulse an unnatural green in the mirror. Climbing into bed, I sleep deeply for the first time since I found the jar. But my dreams are vivid and unnerving with an Alice in Wonderland twist. Giant mushrooms tower over me, their stalks a dazzling white. Tags hang from their caps, swaying gently. I reach up to turn one over and find an old Bible verse, a line from Genesis I heard during my mother’s brief foray into church— From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.

T HE NEXT MORNING, my mouth feels extra dry and weirdly numb. I dress quickly and decide to leave the boot off for the first time, my foot still tender but far less swollen. Myrtle watches me enter her little kitchen and sits a cup of coffee before me along with a dish of sugar cubes.

“Where’d you go last night?” she asks, and I wonder how she knows.

My eyes meet hers, guilt pooling behind them. “There was a guest who stopped up the toilet in the public bathroom. I went to help plunge it.”

She sips from her cup. “That’s odd.”

“What is?” I drop two cubes into my coffee and stir.

“That they would come all this way in the middle of the night to tell you.” She looks down her nose at me. “Usually, they just let it overflow.”

It’s not a pleasant thought.

“Which cabin?” she asks.

“Hmm? Oh. Four, I think.”

She smiles. “I’ll have to thank them when I get the chance.”

I smile back. Cabin four is checking out this morning, but I don’t bother saying so. One look tells me she knows already. I could throw it back in her face, ask her where she goes creeping off to half the nights, but I don’t really want to rock this boat. I need Aunt Myrtle. Whatever was in that jar, I won’t be eating it again.

Fortunately, the day is a busy one and Myrtle doesn’t get another opportunity to rake me over the coals about my nightly whereabouts. I’m far more focused today than I have been, pulling sheets from beds and mopping up the laundry room floor and cleaning out the toilets of the empty cabins. Myrtle has one strict policy—cleanliness. Especially when it comes to bathrooms. Her cabins are small and understated inside, but they’re cute enough and more importantly, they’re sparkling clean. Toilets and sinks get cleaned every day in occupied cabins unless they hang a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the exterior knob. But even in the unoccupied cabins, toilets and sinks get cleaned every other day. I did try to point out that no one was using them, therefore it was an unnecessary waste of product, but Myrtle would hear none of it.

The café is unusually full. The continental offerings at breakfast get wiped out, and five people from town come in for waffles. Lunch is BLTs and it seems like just about everybody and their brother wants one. Dinner is a classic tuna casserole with garlic bread. I worry we’ll sell out of the two whole trays she’s made. I’m refilling waters when the unfamiliar couple comes in. It must be nearly seven by now. We don’t have a regular closing time. Myrtle typically just locks up after the last dinner guest has left or been run off. Tonight, we’re running later than usual.

He strides through the front door like he owns the place, seats himself at a table I only bussed minutes before. But she lags behind, refusing to make eye contact, her dress several sizes too big for her frame.

I take the pitcher of water back to Myrtle in the kitchen.

“Go see what the travelers want,” she tells me. Traveler is what she calls anybody coming in off the road.

I nod and make my way over. “You here for the tuna casserole?”

“You got a menu?” he asks, voice rough.

I point to the chalkboard Myrtle uses. “You’re looking at it.”

He peers across the room at her writing. “I want the BLT.”

“Sorry,” I tell him. “We ran out of bacon at four o’clock.”

He looks up at me, and I recognize the haughtiness in his expression, that same edge Henry always had, as if he were a head above everyone else in the room. As if I am lucky to be in his presence. “I don’t like tuna fish,” he says slowly.

“Well, we can make you a peanut butter and jelly,” I suggest. “It’s what we give the kids.”

He glares at me, licks his bottom lip. “Fine.”

I turn to the woman. “And for you?”

For the first time, she looks up, and that’s when I see the swollen cheekbone, shiny and purple, the broken vessels and bruising under her eye. Suddenly, the large dress makes sense. The injuries beneath it are probably worse than her face. She can’t bear anything against her skin.

“She’ll have the same as me,” her husband or boyfriend interjects. He eyes her across the table. “I don’t want to smell fish on you in the car.”

My hands begin to tremble. I wipe them across the front of my shirt.

“Tonight would be great, sweetheart,” he says, shooting me an irritated glance.

In it, I see her body crumpled on the floor, see the trajectory of his leg as he kicks her, watch her bleed across the carpet, the baby lost to her now. My blood surges, a whoosh sounding in my ears.

“Sure.” I bite the word off at the end and walk slowly to the kitchen, passing Myrtle on the way. She’s been roped into a conversation with two of Ed’s friends, who spend most of their free time at the Drunken Moose. Their favorite subjects are the weather, guns, and fishing.

“And coffee!” I hear the man shout across the café at me.

My shoulders jerk and I duck behind the counter to pour his cup, hands shaking the whole time. I know this man. He’s not Henry’s exact match, but he’s of a kind. And I know an abused woman when I see one. She’s lucky he let her come in here at all, looking like that. He probably figures no one knows them, so they won’t be confronted. Guys like him count on people’s need to maintain the status quo. Or he’s become so arrogant he’s lost touch with the fact he’s committed a crime. He’ll speed out of here when he’s done, probably hold her down while he rapes her tonight for having the gall to look me in the face. I stare into the black void of his coffee and see all the pain Henry has ever caused me. Anger flushes across my skin like heat, and I begin to perspire. My stomach twists. It’s not nausea exactly, but a need for release. My lip curls. Leaning down slightly, I work my tongue, gathering saliva, and spit a long drip into his cup, stirring it with my finger for good measure. Someday, I’ll find a way to fight back that really counts for something, but for now, this little gesture brings a modicum of justice.

I set the coffee before him, burning with every step. I place a glass of ice water next to her. I want to touch her shoulder, tell her I know. But that would only make it worse for her. I walk back, preparing to make his sandwich, when Myrtle steps in front of me.

“I’ve got this,” she says, grabbing the handle of the fridge. Her eyes dart from me to their table. “Why don’t you go outside, check on the bathroom, make sure there’s plenty of toilet paper.”

“But there’s so many people—” I start to say.

Myrtle narrows her eyes at me, tucks her chin. “Go outside, Acacia. Cool off. You look… flushed.”

I think she knows what I’m feeling. She must have seen the woman, too. I nod and stalk out into the cool air, not even stopping to pet Bart. I dally in the bathroom, restocking toilet paper and changing the trash. I wash my hands and splash water across my face. And then I kick around in the grass behind the café, wait ing for my internal body temperature to regulate, for the tremor to leave my hands and the burn to leave my skin. It takes several long, slow breaths as I look up to the sky, stars beginning to spill across it like glitter.

It’s so beautiful here it hurts, a deep ache in the chest like your heart is stretching, too small to take it all in. These mountains hold me in a fertile embrace, a mystical undercurrent pulsing just beneath the soles of my feet. I never fancied myself the outdoorsy type, but here I feel connected to something I’ve been missing my whole life. As if these mountains and I are made of the same stuff. As if I am closer to the bobcat and the timber wolf and the black bear than I am to another human being. It helps that I can’t imagine Henry here, in a place so rugged and wild, so free. He would detest the natural order of it, the lack of right angles. It makes me love it all the more. I can see why Myrtle came here and never left. I may never leave myself.

Convinced I’ve taken enough of a break, I head back toward the café. I’m just walking up to the front door when I see the man from the road through the window. He stands, takes an ungainly step as if his legs don’t quite work, and turns to the side. His stomach swells before my eyes and he clutches at it. His skin burnishes with a sickly urine color, the whites of his eyes turning yellow like aged paper. He stumbles forward, vomiting violently across his shoes, and I see the wet stain grow along the back of his tight jeans as he shits himself. The woman with him begins screaming as he collapses, taking another table down with him in a great clatter of dishes.

I am frozen with one hand on the door. As he falls, my eyes meet Myrtle’s across the café, and in them, I see fear.